In 1997, Patrick Marber premiered his second play, Closer, at the Royal National Theatre, in London. Set in that city, the show looks at four intersecting lives. After Alice, a stripper, is hit by a car, a passerby, Dan, takes her to the hospital. A year later, Dan has finished a novel about Alice but falls for Anna, the woman photographing the book cover. Then Dan, pretending to be Anna, meets Larry, a dermatologist, in a cybersex chat room. Closer was an immediate success, and “so intricately plotted,” according to a review in Variety, “that its structural finesse may go unnoticed by those caught up in the narrative.” The play has been regularly staged ever since, but now, on its 25th anniversary, Clare Lizzimore presents it with a modern twist. —Jensen Davis